Edo 2024: Aspirant alleges plot to use Uzodimma fomula to impose Idahosa as APC guber candidate
Maureen Aguta
An aspirant for the ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the September 21 2024 gubernatorial election in Edo State, Dr. Blessing Agbomhere has sounded the alarm over what he described as a plot by the leader of the party in the State, Senator Adams Oshiomhole to foist House of Representatives member, Dennis Idahosa, as the party’s standard bearer in the election.
According to him, Oshiomhole intended to use undemocratic means, having realized that members of the Party in Edo were prepared to reject Idahosa and elect an unblemished candidate who could win the governorship seat for the party.
Agbomhere, who is the former South-South Zonal Organising Secretary of the APC, alleged that Oshiomhole had concluded plans to coerce the National Chairman of the APC, Alhaji Abdulahi Umar Ganduje into appointing Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodinma as the Chairman of the Edo State Primaries Committee of the party, where about three hundred and twenty six thousand, two hundred and twelve votes will be cooked up in favour of Oshiomhole’s stooge, while a handful of votes will be allocated to the eleven other aspirants.
He noted that Uzodinma was to use the opportunity of the Edo State primary election to pay back Oshiomhole for handing him the party’s ticket to contest the governorship position in Imo State in 2018, when he (Oshiomhole) presided over the affairs of the party as National Chairman.
In a statement which he signed in Abuja, on Monday, Agbomhere insisted that stakeholders in the party had, at various times, expressed the need for a free and fair primary election in Edo State but Senator Oshiomhole was bent on imposing a candidate on the party which he said would be vehemently opposed and would end up ridiculing the democratic principles and antecedents the President and Commander in Chief of the Armed forces, Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR was known for and had always stood for.
Agbomhere said Edo APC would not allow Dennis Idahosa, a serial decampee to be imposed on them by the same Oshiomhole.
Agbomhere said: “APC’s National Working Committee must not allow Senator Oshiomhole to ridicule APC and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu again in Edo State. He said Chief Hope Uzodinma was the Chairman of the APC Party Primaries Committee that returned Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu as the Candidate of the party in 2020 and stayed with the duo of Ize-Iyamu and Oshiomhole throughout the period of the election, hence his coming again in 2024 will be seen as that of a hatchet man.”
Agbomhere added that if Oshiomhole’s plot was left unchecked, the APC in Edo State would be thrown into a massive crisis which would snowball into a catastrophic loss of the November governorship election and once again depriving the people of the state an opportunity to benefit from the Renewed Hope Agenda of the APC government at the Centre.